Meredith Whitney: Brace for '50 to 100' of Sizable Town Defaults

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said U.S. states face a “day of reckoning” as they contend with looming budget deficits in the wake of the longest recession since the 1930s.

Christie, who cut $1.3 billion in aid to schools and municipalities this year to close a $10.7 billion deficit, said states’ pension and debt costs have grown to be “unsustainable.” Benefits, education and healthcare will be reduced in many states, he said.

“The day of reckoning has arrived, that’s it. And it’s going to arrive everywhere,” Christie, 48, a first-term Republican, said during an interview on CBS Corp.’s “60 Minutes” program. Areas such as education and pensions “were third rails of politics. We are now left with no alternatives.”

The recession caused the biggest nationwide decline in state tax receipts on record, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. States have filled more than $425 billion in funding gaps since fiscal 2009; the combined imbalance is likely to reach $140 billion in the next budget year, the center said.

Christie faces a deficit of as much as $10.5 billion in the next fiscal year, the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services estimated in July. Everything from worker pensions to prisons may face cuts as U.S. governors contend with a fourth year of budget deficits, incoming state executives said last month at a meeting of the National Governors Association in Colorado.

Whitney’s Prediction

States’ fiscal stress may trigger a “spate” of defaults among local municipalities, Meredith Whitney, the banking analyst who correctly predicted Citigroup Inc.’s dividend cut in 2008, said in the same segment on “60 Minutes.”

“You could see 50 sizable defaults,” she said. “Fifty to 100 sizable defaults” amounting to “hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Her comments echoed remarks she made in September in an interview on Bloomberg Television, in which she said the U.S. government will face pressure to bail out struggling states in the next 12 months.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said U.S. states face a day of reckoning as they contend with looming budget deficits in the wake of the longest recession since the 1930s.Christie, who cut $1.3 billion in aid to schools and municipalities this year to close a $10.7...